


Mods Never Sleep

by Merixcil



Series: Tumblr Fics [85]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Gen, Humor, References to Drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:47:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24472273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merixcil/pseuds/Merixcil
Summary: Joey is a moderately successful webcomic creator trying to get his useless flatmate to engage with his work
Relationships: Joker (DCU) & Edward Nygma
Series: Tumblr Fics [85]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1759627
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Mods Never Sleep

_wow Batman is so cool! XD great work, cant wait 2 read more_

_This is my fav page yet omg_

_hnnnngggg your art!!!!! I love it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Bats’s expression in that last panel is just woah, I feel so bad for him. Poor misunderstood baby_

_neat_

_awww yeah update day_

_fgougoihiyfigouihiutdfifdf_

_This comic is just so well thought out. The stuff they sell in Forbidden Planet really can’t compare. I’m eternally gobsmacked at how clever your writing is, the way you’ve woven the theme of duality through this story from the beginning has me on the edge of my seat waiting to see what the state of our protagonist’s soul is going to be when all is said and done. Personally, I think he’s going to have to realise that Batman isn’t a sustainable identity and decide to give it up but you’ve surprised me so many times in the past that I just can’t be sure. I’m still reeling over the reveal that Harvey Dent was Two Face the entire time. I would like to pick you brain sometime…[Open to read more]_

_Cool story, needs more tits_

_hehe me and my friends always get together to read your updates. Batman is our religion hehehehehe_

_Click here to find out how YOU can earn $800 a day from the comfort of your own home_

_YES YES YES KICK HSI ASS BATS!!!!!_

The tension headache that had been trying to eat Joey alive all day finally won the battle. He grimaced as he scrolled through the reams of comments that had come in since the update the night before, trying to find the motivation to block the porn bots that were swarming his site. It just didn’t seem worth it when the vast majority of the users wasting their life in his comment section didn’t understand his art. But hey, he’d picked up three new Patrons which wasn’t bad going. Soon he’d be able to kick Eddie off his sofa and live like a big boy.

“Will you shut up?” Eddie drawled. From the sofa. For fuck’s sake.

“I am shut up.”

“You’ve been making a high-pitched beeping noise for the past ten minutes. Knock it off.”

Joey turned in his chair to stare Eddie down where he lay on the other side of the room. “See, I thought you and I had a little deal. I pay seventy five percent of the rent and bills, and in return you stay out of the room while I’m working and don’t whine like a little bitch.”

Eddie nodded towards Joey’s monitor. “That doesn’t look like work. It looks like flagrant narcissism.”

“Moderating the comments section is an important part of managing the site!”

“Please, you’d sooner die than enforce a rule.”

It’s true, but he shouldn’t say it. Joey turned back to the screen, booting up his laptop as he opened photoshop to begin working on the next page of _Batman_. Batman was about to confront James Gordon on the bridge out of Gotham and the two of them were ready to wax lyrical on the nature of man. Hysterical.

“If you can’t stop laughing, can I please go lie down in your bed? I’ve got a bit of a headache.”

“If you’ve got a headache, you should read my comic. Clears headaches right up, one hundred percent guaranteed by all doctors, even the weird rebellious one out of the ten. Why, just now I had a headache but working on this page has set me right.”

“You’re a genius.” Eddie replied with thick sarcasm.

“You know, I _am_ a genius, but not for the reasons most of my fans think. My fans are fucking idiots. You though, you’d probably get it, you’re smart like that.”

The change was instantaneous. One little compliment on his intellect and Eddie went from miserable sack of potatoes in a lime green Hawaiian shirt to a sleek, sharp little thing that desperately wanted to feed. He was like a shark with an off button. “Yeah?”

“Oh yeah, these fools online think it’s a tragedy.”

“But you literally never stop laughing about it.”

“I know! It’s a work of high concept comedy, but the joke is lost on so many people. I guess I’ve got to laugh, or I’ll cry.”

Eddie sat up, wincing against the force of his headache. He calls in a hangover, but Joey used to hang with Crane back in the day and he knew that nights out with the Scarecrow tend to end with something far less orthodox than booze.

“Have I piqued your interest?” Joey asked

Eddie shook his head. “Not so fast. Run me through the plot first.”

“But the plot is the joke!”

“I have to know what I’d be getting myself in for. If it sounds interesting, I’ll give it a read.”

Muttering curses about flatmates who refuse to engage with the work that pays most of their bills, Joey rummaged around for the press release he kept on hand for just such an occasion. One time he’d tried to explain Batman without its help and got so overexcited that he accidentally revealed a plot point from two chapters down the line.

He found the piece of paper and held it up like a town crier about to bellow the news up and down the high street. “Ahem! _Batman_ is a webcomic by Seattle based artist, Joey-“

“Spare me the mundane details. I know who you are.”

Joey’s answering scowl bounced neatly off Eddie’s frosty exterior. “Bruce Wayne is the son of Gotham’s most elite power couple, Thomas and Martha Wayne. A life of luxury seemed certain for the boy till his parents were gunned down by a petty thief in an alleyway. Now a grown man, Bruce wrestles with his lasting mental scars and his deep-seated revulsion for all things criminal by donning the mask of the Batman every night to take justice into his own hands. Widely considered the best book outside traditional comics publishing, _Batman_ has taken the internet by storm, and-“

“And I definitely don’t need to listen to you jerk off to your positive press.”

“How would I be jerking off?” Joey threw up his hands. “How? When they don’t even get the joke?”

Eddies mouth twisted into a pout. “I mean, I can’t say it sounds like a particularly good set up for a comedy, but I’m intrigued. If you can pull it off it sounds like it would be my kind of humour. But on the other hand, I know the kind of jokes you make, and I can’t see them working at all in something like this.”

First of all, Joey had never told a bad joke in his life. When he told people of the chicken crossing the road, he took them on a journey. Second, Eddie was an idiot. “The joke is the setup, bozo!”

“How?”

“Grown man dresses up as a bat to fight crime whilst pretending that being extremely wealthy doesn’t grant him the best shot at happiness someone with two dead parents could possibly wish for, all while refusing to go to therapy. How is that not funny?”

“In every conceivable way.”

“You know what? I was wrong about you. You’re just as small minded as the rest of them.” Joey threw the press release back into the melee under his desk with a huff. When he returned to the panel he had been working on just a few minutes earlier, the joke had left him and he knew he’d be in the wrong mood to make progress for the rest of the day.

Looking back over his shoulder, Joey found Eddie already collapsed back onto the sofa, shark button safety off. So, he decided to dedicate the rest of his afternoon to laughing at the idiots in his comic section.

He really was very popular. There were enough people out on the world wide web so eager for his attention that he could charge for it in five-minute increments and wrack up quite the nest egg over the course of an afternoon.

A new comment popped up as he scrolled to the end of the comment chain on the update. The page showed Batman deciding to let Two Face go free rather than bring him in, like only an incredibly stupid person would do.

_lmao the people in these comments are incredibly lame_

That was too perfect. It took Joey three tries to log into his commenter account, so hard was he laughing. The little green ‘joker is online’ screen popped up at the top of the screen, to let anyone else trawling the site know that he was around. Whatever he posted; it would be dogpiled in minutes.

_What does that make you then? >;)_

Now all he needed to do was sit back and wait. If he’d played his hard right Joey had just set off a full blown troll war, which should keep him entertained for the next couple of hours at the very least.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally posted on my [tumblr](https://jeffersonhairpie.tumblr.com/). You can aso find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/chadfuture_)
> 
> **Black Lives Matter - if you are able, please do send some money to some bail funds around the United States to ensure that any arrested protesters get the legal aid they need. Full list of bail funds[here](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZIvDZpHqvNZkf8dGFXVjfk-Wq0Y9FTG410NJbH_8K8M/edit#gid=0)**
> 
> Comments are love!


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